Take This Waltz
by VeryDoubtfulGuest
Summary: Oddly enough, this lacks both smut and violence. Not at all like me, mm? But still, a strangely sweet little one-shot, post-DH, compliant with most canon. WARNING: silly and sweet.


His survival may have been miraculous, but there was still nothing heavenly about Severus Snape's disposition. Crouched on a hotel roof in Vienna, waiting to see if the last-ditch ambush of the resurgent Death Eaters would need to be sprung, Hermione Granger glanced sidelong at the corvid profile of her former professor and sighed.

"Bored, Mrs. Weasley?" he drawled, not taking his eyes from the building opposite.

"Cold, Professor Snape," she snapped. "And it's not Mrs. Weasley anymore, as you've been repeatedly informed."

"Do forgive me. One does forget inconsequential details when battling evil."

Hermione rolled her eyes. He'd played dead for two years, and had clearly not spent the time reading Emily Post. With her marriage gone down in flames and the long, stealthy battle with the remaining Death Eaters nearly over, she'd become just as snarky, so she remained silent; no use throwing stones from inside her own glass house.

Besides, the building they were watching was distractingly gorgeous. The Vienna State Opera, a ridiculous confection of a building, lit up like a stage set for the annual Opera Ball. Men in white tie and tails, ladies in gorgeous gowns and jewels, the inevitable waltz audible even from their perch -- the whole thing was like a fairy tale. And she was hiding in the shadows opposite, clutching her broom like the wicked witch of the tale, soot in her hair and a smear of blood on her cheek from an earlier clash. A far cry from Cinderella. She snorted, self-deprecating, and was profoundly relieved when a silver shimmer of light came over her shoulder, drawing her shadow alongside Snape's in shivering uncertainty.

She rose, turning, grinning to see Harry's Patronous there. "Ambush cancelled. No need. We got 'em all!" A stag couldn't smile, but Hermione could hear her old friend's joy in the statement. "See you both back at base."

"Thank Merlin," she groaned as the stag cantered away, fading into star trails and nothingness. "I could murder a curry. Or murder for a hot bath..." Trailing off as she turned, Hermione caught a glimpse of Snape's face, staring off after Harry's Patronous with a look of such unguarded heartbreak that it froze her place. "Oh...Oh, Professor." She finally breathed. "It hurts, still?"

He rose to his full height, towering over her, his face once more masked in shadows. Uncharacteristically, hesitantly, he whispered, "Always."

The moment would vanish, soon. She knew it. He'd shutter himself away again, be his snarky bastard self, and probably avoid the victory celebration back at Grimmauld Place with a snarled excuse about preferring the company of malarial mosquitoes. He'd slap away any hand extended in friendship. But she had to offer it anyway.

"I'm so sorry, Professor. She must have been extraordinary for you to still love her after all this time."

He drew breath, and she resigned herself to the inevitable verbal lashing. Which is why she gaped at him stupidly for a tick when he answered, "Please, call me Severus. I believe we've seen enough to dispense with titles."

"Ah...er. Yes. Severus. Well. Call me Hermione, then? That is," she added archly, "if you can manage to forego the pleasure of calling me Mrs. Weasley."

"You should never have married him," Snape murmured, stepping closer. That voice, all velvet and vetiver-dark, like the touch of a stranger in a shadowed room. "He is beneath you."

There was a terrible, awkward space between them, ornamented by the delicate strains of the music filtering up from below. Blinking back tears and shock, Hermione filled it with the first thing that came to mind. "Shame to come all this way, on the night of the Opera Ball, and not waltz," she half-babbled. "Who knows when I'll get to Vienna again, much less in February, though they hold it the last Thursday before Ash Wednesday, I think, so it must be in March sometimes..." Again, she trailed off, this time because he reached forward, taking her broom from her hands with grave ceremony, leaning it against the parapet next to his own.

And then he bowed.

And then he asked, "May I have this dance?"

She could have laughed, dispelled the tension and the moment, assured that such a strange and frightening intimacy never happened again. But instead she nervously patted her hair, sniffed, and came to his arms.

He had touched her before, of course; they were comrades in arms, had jerked eachother out of the way of curses, slapped weapons and wands into eachother's grasp. But tonight, in this stolen moment, his fingers curved around hers exquisitely, a fierce gentleness in his touch as he cradled her hand, brought his other around to hover delicately as a spider in the small of her back. She shivered. She rested her wrist on his shoulder, just so, as she'd learned all those years ago for the Tri-Wizard Ball.

And, alone on the roof, they danced.


End file.
